The Obama Justice Department’s Secret Blogging Team… Is it Illegal?

DOJ denies existence of a 'blog squad
Washington Times
Oct 8, 2009
Kerry Picket

Various conservative blogs are talking about the existence of a "blog squad" at the U.S. Justice Department. The website, the Muffled Oar writes that a blogging unit formed within the Department of Justice to counter websites with posts, articles, and user comments critical of the Obama administration. Matthew Miller Director of Public Affair at the Justice Department told the Washington Times,:

"There is no 'blog squad'. There is Tracy [Russo] who handles online media. It’s the policy of the office of public affairs to not post anonymous comments. We have not seen any evidence that anyone does post comments, and if we did have evidence of that, people would no longer work here."

Mr. Miller countered accusations of the existence of a "blog squad" pointing to what he says is lack of evidence.

"I noticed, actually, that the posts don’t actually point to any evidence of anonymous comments coming from the Department of Justice, which of course, I believe you can trace. I think it says they’ve seen an uptick."

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com

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UPDATE: When searching, we found this:

Justice Department Launches New Web Site
Main Justice - Joe Palazzolo, Mary Jacoby - ‎Oct 1, 2009‎
Here's the announcement — on the Justice Department's blog — from Tracy Russo, the architect of the site and blogger outreach coordinator in the Office of ...
Justice Department joins Twitter The Hill
Justice Dept. on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter CNET News
The Justice Department 2.0 CNN Political Ticker

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UPDATE COMMENTS: Why is the DOJ going on Twitter and other sites? Makes absolutely no sense. Those sites should be off limits to Government employees while working and being paid by our tax dollars. What benefit is it for DOJ to join various sites? Now they expect all of us to think there is not something fishy about their latest denial. With this Administration most people don't have a clue what is correct.

Since the WH Spokesman has attacked Fox News as being part of the Republican Party, what else can you say? Any criticsm against Obama is met with attacks. Talk about whiney people -- this Administration seems to have a corner on whine. We have posted the latest and now people can decide what to believe. That is if they can figure out what the White House is saying. Looks to us like they got caught and are backtracking.

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What does this all mean? Our tax dollars are going to the DOJ, Eric Holder, for him to hire people to spy on people that bring out the facts on Obama, the DOJ, and the rest of the Administration? That is despicable and an attempt to take away free speech.

Is it legal? We will let the attorneys decide that issue, but we will state that it is unethical for DOJ employees to pretend to be someone they are not. We believe it should be illegal if not already for anyone in Government to post on websites defending the Administration unless they are up front who they are. To pretend to be Conservatives is deceitful and dishonest.

Remember Holder is the one who dropped the charges for the NEW Black Panthers on voter intimidation that was caught on tape in Philly. Even the Civil Rights Commission wants answers on why charges were dropped, but they are still waiting. Long time DOJ employees warned against it but once again Holder doesn't want to abide by the laws he wants everyone else to follow. Now we have the next request from this group: Oct 9, 2009, the Civil Rights Commission to Holder: Investigate ACORN now!

The commissioners called the filing of “possibly hundreds of thousands of fraudulent voter registration applications in some 14 states” an “invidious invitation for corruption” that disenfranchises legitimate voters, and called on Holder to take “serious and rapid action.”

Do we believe that Holder will call for an investigation? No we believe he will continue to stall as he replaces US Attornyes with Obama loyalist.

Americans are starting to question why so many Democrats got electd in close races in 2006 and 2008 after ACORN voter fraud is being discovered across the Country. If ACORN voter fraud targets Red State Oklahoma, they will target anywhere. In our opinion, that will make no difference to Eric Holder.

Rahm Emmanuel who is now Obama's right hand person was in charge of the DNCC when he had candidates pretend to be conservative to get elected, and they won close races. Since he comes out of the Chicago political machine, we now wonder about how many seats ACORN voter fraud made the difference for the Dems in Congress so Obama would have a Congress filled with Democrats. The 'Blame Bush' attack we believe was a cover to hide the voter fraud.

Motor Voter brought to life by the Democrats doesn't even require proof you are a citizen. Picture ID's are not required in most states to vote. This has led to rampant voter fraud from the same organization, ACORN, who received almost $1M from the Obama campaign. Crickets will be chirping a long time before Holder does anything on this. It is going to be up to the states.

Last week the DNC called Republicans and anyone laughing about the absurb award of the 'Nobel Peace Prize' to Obama as aligned with the terrorists. We are already racist because we 'dare' criticize Obama's agenda and his waste of our tax dollars flying to the Olympics for five hours, 25 minutes of which was spent lecturing General McChrystal on why he shouldn't speak in public when Obama cannot make a decision on Afghanistan. Now according to the DNC we are aligned with terrorists, and they don't think the American voters are waking up to all of this? We must not 'dare' critize their chosen one (sarcasm) or we get called names.

Most Americans after nine months of the Obama agenda want OUT. The vast majority of Americans want less federal government not more something the Obama Administration cannot seem to grasp or they don't want to understand. Even the amount of tax dollrs Obama has used to fly AF One around the world apologizing for the United States has to be huge. Wonder if there is an accounting available for cost of AF One? We are not going to hold our breath waiting.

After all that has happened with this Administration and their power grab, we learn about a group of DOJ employees who are going to sites to defend Obama and Holder. Going to be interesting to see them troll Free Republic and try to get past the smell test of long time Freepers. Democrats have been trying it for years. Right after the Florida fiasco caused by Al Gore and now we suspect ACORN voter fraud, the Dems supporting Gore hit Free Republic in droves but pretending to be conservative didn't work.

Note to Holder: You are wasting your time on Free Republic having people defend this Administration particularly Obama or you! Not going to work. The people in this Administration from top to bottom seem to forget that we have a Constitution that guarantees us Freedom of Speech.

The more this Administration tries to dampen Free Speech, the more sites like this that will spring up. This Administration by its actions not its campaign rhetoric now scares a lot of people about what their ultimate agenda will be. We love America and don't want this country moving toward Socialism. Can guarantee that a lot of people that voted for Obama did not vote for our freedoms to be curtailed as they actually believed he was going to do what he promised in the campaign. It was all rhetoric and a shell game used against voters by the Chicago machine that is now in the White House.

Read the various comments about this and then tell us that our rights to Freedom of Speech are not under attak.

The Obama Justice Department’s Secret Blogging Team… Is it Illegal?

(Read WP posts from Warner Todd Huston)

Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, has apparently hired a cadre of left-wing, Democrat campaign bloggers to troll through the Internet looking for news stories and blog posts that denigrate the Obama agenda. After such websites are found it is the job of these secret lefty bloggers to leave comments that come to the support of Obamaism in the comments sections. It seems that Eric Holder has created his own little propaganda unit in a valiant effort to become the Bloggi Riefenstahl of the Obama era.

As reported at http://muffledoar.blogspot.com/, a blog that first broke the story of Holder’s secretive blogging unit — dubbed the “Blog Squad” by blogger Isaac Muzzey — Holder has housed this unit in the Office of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice. It also appears that former John Edwards staffer Tracy Russo is part of this special unit.

A site called whorunsgov.com reported back in May that DOJ hired Russo to do “media outreach for the whole department.” It is, according to whorunsgov.com, the first time such an effort has been made at DOJ.

Of Russo’s duties, The Muffled Oar says:

Not only is the Department of Justice Blog Squad going to reach out to nontraditional media like TPM Muckraker or the Muffled Oar, but they are also tasked with fostering anonymous comments at conservative leaning blogs such as the Free Republic. They are also tasked with fostering anonymous comments, or comments under pseudonyms, at newspaper websites with stories critical of the Department of Justice, Holder and President Obama.

If indeed this is what DOJ media outreach does it would most certainly qualify as “astroturfing.” Astroturfing is the action of using fake commenters and multiple screen names on all sorts of sites to push a similar opinion to create the appearance of a grass roots movement and make it seem as if there are all sorts of individuals naturally supporting a product or political movement.

It most certainly is a creepy, propagandistic sort of effort that Holder’s office is involved in and it is one that certainly seems an immoral one. After all, it most certainly is lying to the public if there are a handful of DOJ employees casting about on hundreds of different websites pretending that they are just your average citizen coming to the support of the Obama administration. But is it illegal? Hans von Spakovsky of National Review’s the corner blog certainly thinks so.

I doubt that the Office of Public Affairs (OPA) has received an ethics opinion from Justice’s Professional Responsibility Advisory Office (PRAO) saying that it is acceptable for OPA employees to be harassing critics of the department through postings that deliberately hide their DOJ affiliation (a practice that is not very “open” or “transparent”). DOJ lawyers also ought to be aware of ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4, which states that it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation. If the report in The Muffled Oar is correct, tax dollars are being used directly for such dishonest, deceitful behavior.

I must say, it’s hard to disagree with von Spakovsky (if that’s his real name! — a little joke there).

Mr. von Spakovsky also makes a perfectly pertinent point to wrap up his blog post on this matter. He wonders if the Obama administration will ever learn the difference between political campaign and the “entirely different responsibility it now has to enforce this nation’s laws in an objective, nonpartisan, nonpolitical manner”?

I think that the question is a good one. After all, after nearly a year in office, we have yet to see the end Obama’s constant blaming of Bush for every little problem he runs up against not to mention the constant campaign speeches and appearances on TV at every hour, day and night. One gets the uneasy feeling that President Barack Obama has yet to put in an actual day’s work as he constantly campaigns for office instead.